In a new study, scientists have revealed that rogue supernovas that explode all alone got into the deep space most likely by binary black hole slingshots.
Ryan Foley of the University of Illinois traced 13 high-velocity exploding stars back to the galaxies they came from to find the peculiar combination of events leading to the stars' lonely deaths.
The supernovas are known as calcium-rich because they produce an unusually large amount of calcium.
Foley said that looking around where the supernovas exploded, there was nothing there, no trace of star formation, no clusters of old stars, there was nothing nearby,
He said that these things were starting somewhere else and moving long distances before they die.
Foley looked at the galaxies that had produced the stars before ejecting them.
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After having a close look, Foley noticed that all of the galaxies that had produced the runaway supernovas showed signs of merging, two galaxies colliding and rearranging into one big galaxy.
Foley said that the velocities were incredible, on the order of 4.5 million miles per hour, adding that there was only one way to get a binary star system moving that fast: a slingshot from a close flyby of a binary supermassive black hole.
Foley explained that people have two dancing partners, they do-si-do, and one of the pair gets flung away
Foley said that the white dwarf and its partner were ejected out like from a slingshot, adding that after traveling at a high speed for about 50 million years, they exploded out in the middle of nowhere.
Foley further said that these supernovas could be the bread crumbs to find their way to these supermassive binary black holes, and they could potentially find them in much higher numbers.
The study is published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.